


Roy G. Biv

by floralb0t



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Experimental Style, Frankly ridiculous amount of sweet voice, He/Him and They/Them Pronouns for Benrey (Half-Life), I'm Bad At Tagging, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, and sweet voice theory, he/him and xe/xem pronouns for bubby, the rest of the team will be around for the third part thank you <3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28413090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floralb0t/pseuds/floralb0t
Summary: He'd stopped noticing the pain once it reached "unbearable", but no, it is actually worse now. It must be close to the end.Pink green purple.Pink green purple.Brown black blue.Pink.Green.Purple.---Hi you might know me as the person who made the nerf gun comics over on tumblr! this stream-of-consciousness style fic is the Benrey side of me wondering how the Science Team got to the domestic bliss part of their life I like to draw. Due to the writing style I'm not going to give this fic the explicit warning tags but there will be mention of Experimentation, violence, Benrey-typical death, panic attacks etc.(tags/title/summary all may change)
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman, eventual frenrey
Comments: 19
Kudos: 69





	1. Desert Sands Are Tan Which Is Brown

He's saying words. He knows he's saying words, can feel the lips moving and the eyes opening and the sweet bubbles popping on his sharp fucking teeth. He's saying words but he can't hear them and the steady stream of consciousness that supplies those words is so devoid of actual thought that he's not sure if it's intelligible in the slightest. Learning human speech, language made of sounds and positions of the tongue and teeth in complex orders was hard at first. It took time. Repetition. Linking of words to colours. Letters on paper in bright teal listing out different types of acceptable food that wasn't just a previous being caught by hand after a chase. Words in pink and orange describing things that were good and he liked like plush blankets and radio static, and Tommy's dog Sunkist and outside, outside, outside. The words got connected to the colours and even if his brain doesn't think about them anymore, knows the ties on an inherent level subconscious to everything else, they're still connected. 

And now, Benrey is in pain (forest green that ends with a sickly yellow), feels the pull of Nihilanth though he hates it (red like blood with dots of navy blue to pale green gradient), misses his friends (aquamarine to orange like sunshine), and is scared, scared, scared, (lemon to highlighter yellow and back again, overwhelming and bright before dropping a nasty black as dark as night). His brain thinks in the colours and his physiology is sending them out in random, unintelligible patterns, but his mouth, so well trained by scientists in his youth, is translating those colours into words and yelling those words into the long dark night. Long dark night. Black to navy with sparkles of teal to purple. He feels the sloshing of the water against the bits of his person touching the ground and all of a sudden it's warmer and colder, on fire and not. The drip, drip, drip of sweet voice off his lips into the pools of Xenian gunk doesn't take as long as it should. Huh. He'd stopped noticing the pain once it reached "unbearable", but no, it is actually worse now. It must be close to the end. 

Pink green purple. 

Pink green purple.

Brown black blue. 

Pink. 

Green.

Purple.

  
  
  


Humans were confusing. As was Brown. 

Brown was not a colour Benrey had much experience with if he was honest. Of course, growing up, he did things he shouldn't have. But then again the scientists shouldn't have captured a young Xen thing to bring back and inject with humanity. In the end it really all fell back on them. So when someone got too close and he cut a tendon, he didn't feel that bad. Acceptable risks. Acceptable losses. That's what they'd say as they stepped politely around the body of a fallen comrade to finish off their test. 

Even if he didn't feel bad, Benrey eventually stopped lashing out. It didn't do anything anyway. If he accidentally injured a scientist who had learned to be gentle with their needles and soft with their voices so he could focus on the ticking, they'd simply be replaced with a scientist who wasn't. "Good behaviour" was what it was called. And eventually, this good behaviour got him treats. 

Tommy. 

Benrey had to learn to stop being "violent" to gain access to "Tommy" and everything that represented. If he could learn to stop using "violence" to solve his issues, perhaps he could learn other things. And he did, eventually. Words in bright colours typed on white paper. The feeling of anything other than thick canvas, or paper-like clothing, or unbleached linen, or hard leather, or cold metal. Or the moving pictures which show concepts and theoreticals. Or Music. Or swears. But he liked music the best. It was useful to learn human concepts better. Once he had words he could link to his colours to string along sentences and hold conversations, music was like advanced lesson plans. Yellow is the concept of fear. Purple is reassurance, a marker of the other, the "you". But the concept of "nostalgia" is Daffodil Rose Mulberry. Yellow Pink Purple. The direct translation is Fear of Affection for You (past form). Of course, those were Tommy's words, not Benrey's. 

This is where music filled in the gaps. Benrey started to learn the words and feel the emotions in the sounds and swells and music and would sing along, and Tommy would note what was coloured what. They would parse it out together. Daffodil Rose Mulberry (The Fear of Affection for You) was translated much more artfully to mean Fear of Pain caused by the Thought of Missing You, where "You" is both past form and entirely reliant on context to know what it is reference to. "You" could be a joke he'd forgotten the punchline to. It could also be a person he would no longer be seeing. It could be a meal he had eaten too quickly without savouring. It could be the time before he felt bad when he got scared in the testing chamber and lashed out.

Benrey learned what Brown was because of music. He didn't have a word for it, it was chocolate-ginger-sable-dirt-coffee-brown. 

Guilt. 

The first time he'd fucked up enough that Tommy wasn't allowed in. That his music was taken away. That the door was barred extra strong and the ticking of the clock made him sing low and slow to a tune that felt right and everything that came out was brown, he learned what it meant.

He felt it a lot during their trip through Black Mesa.

  
  
  


The first time Benrey listened to ska music he understood why it was apparently associated with a black and white checker pattern. Those were not the colours he associated it with, mind you, but he understood. It was probably the moment he solidified the idea of Tommy as the idea of a Friend, something every other human would henceforth be measured against. Humans didn't think in colours (cornflower violet cyan?), but sometimes they would get close. Ska is black and white in this one pattern. Halloween is orange, purple, and green. Love is red. Nothing is black. Not, nothing, as in no items, concepts, feelings, etcetera are associated with the colour black, but the absence of things itself are in fact are associated with the colour black. Unfair really, and untrue. Absence is merely absence. It feels like the time before Benrey was capable of thinking in words, he had no concept for them and so there was nothing in the brain channel where the words would eventually go. Colours were in a different spot, as were noises, and maybe that's not how brains work technically (he's been splayed on the cold metal tables enough to know humans care about technicalities) but that's how it felt. If you don't know you can want something in the first place, could possibly have if things play out a certain way, how are you to have an opinion on what it may be like to have it? 

The space between death and undeath (not living. He's never really been alive in the way the others describe it) is not black. It is not white or orange or green or brown or pink. It simply is not. 

The first time a scientist took a ticking watch into the testing chamber with Benrey he didn't understand what it was for other than making noise. It grated on his brain at first, (sanguine to ginger brown and back again), but eventually it became steadying. Tick. Tick.

Tick

Tick

Ti-

...

Even in the nothing, the space between, where there is no colour no thoughts no body no me no you there was still a longing for the ticking. For black and white and what it represented in its nice checker patterns. For the sensation of a mouth, even just one, so he could sing out the brown-black-blue, the coffee-midnight-pthalo that danced around his consciousness. 

  
  
  


Desert suns are fucking rude. Like when you're one away from a new highscore and someone steals your kill. 

It's hot. 

It's dry. 

These are not sensations of Xen. Nor are they sensations of Nothing. They are sensations of Earth. And they are usually coupled with gunfire. That's what being outside ment. Gunfire.

The shots of his favoured rifle and Bubby's revolver and Gordon's pistol and whatever the soldiers were using to try and kill him would normally have been too loud for him to hear Coomer's steady counting of his shots under his breath. So quiet it was barely there, more an exhalation in the shape of a number, ever decreasing until his clip was empty and it was replaced. It was like the ticking of the little clocks. A comfort. A reminder that time was passing, steady as ever, uncaring to him and it could be counted on, counted by. He turned his hearing up extra high to make sure he wouldn't lose it, even if the gunfire made his brain buzz like static on Tommy's radio when he took it too far underground. Like how the top of Darnold's soda's felt if he held a finger just millimeters overtop but mean and rude and worse. Like the desert sun feels as it pounds down on his back. 

Maybe if he counts, like Coomer did over the gunfire, like the stopwatches in the lab, maybe it would help. It wouldn't make the sun hurt less or his mouth less dry or the colours tamped down with words purposely steered elsewhere less strong. The sun is orange which is laughter and good things and HEV suits and scientist's highlighters and Gordon's nailpolish and Bubby's flames and Tommy's hat and Darnold's wrist watch and Coomer's socks and Sunkist's fur and he's not thinking about it. The sand is tan which is brown which is guilt and woods he couldn't escape in and Xen's rotting pits and Bubby's shoes and Coomer's pants and Darnold's EVIL soda and Tommy's hair and Gordon's eyes and he is Not Thinking About It. His skin in this light looks pale white, almost grey, silver, which is sickness and metal of sterile tools and long halls with flickering lights and guns while you reload and bones dirty from passing through walls and the "rock" formations on Xen and Sunkist's old collar when it broke while Tommy brought her to visit or the Moon when he managed to escape long enough to make it topside and -

He is Not thinking about it.

It's too quiet though. That's why the colours keep seeping up and his brain remembers the english words and sometimes the spanish ones or icelandic ones or the japanese ones or the french ones depending on what the word is but it's making him think of things he's not thinking about please and thank you.

One step.

Two step.

Three step.

Four step.

This feels nice. Like Coomer over the gunfire, like ticking over the tests.

Five step.

Six step.

Seven step.

Eight step.

The sun is still rude though.

Nine Step.

Ten step.

  
  
  


The scientists in Black Mesa installed a long range teleport dampener on him as soon as they captured him. It was like a little pinch on the skin. It made his cells stay together when they didn't want to. He could still change their composition, speed up their regrowth, even turn off the silly human laws of physics on his existence, but he couldn't tear them apart and reform them the way he used to. 

Benrey only managed to break it once. 

Tommy brought him a game (under the cover of learning, same as always) and he had asked where the games came from. Where Tommy went after his visits. Games and movies and shows were theoreticals, possibilities. Sometimes they were close to true, but you still needed to double check the facts, that's the rule with Documentaries. Most of the time they were not true though. Therefore, it wasn't a stretch to understand why Benrey hadn't realized that the places depicted in shows and movies and video games were not always as false as their plot lines. The halls of Black Mesa were stark white or clean grey, with their painted lines to help the scientists and guards and administration know where to go. The flashes of outside he saw was only the sky through windows in the sides of mountains, only showing the sky with clouds or stars or the moon. 

Tommy came back with photos of him and Darnold (who he had only met in passing at this point, when he'd snuck out or was in transport) taking Sunkist on walks or visiting local landmarks or just pictures of interesting sights or just. Pictures. So nobody could blame him for ever realizing that trees were real until he saw them in pictures, right? He thought it was just endless sun on Earth, like how Xen was the endless expanse of Nihilanth's control and space is just endlessly empty. But no, the green of kindness and comfort was real. Again, nobody could blame Benrey for being excited at that thought. He'd asked to be let out before and was always told no, even when he learned how to do it in their quaint little words made up only of sounds instead of the colours he was much more familiar with. So this time Benrey didn't bother asking. He knew it had something with the little pinch feeling on his skin. 

Dark blue-purple, light teal, dark blue-purple. Tommy would describe it as Indigo-cyan-indigo in order to be precise. Me/you-need-me/you? Tommy would translate it as curiosity. The text on a stark white page looked like 2006 powerpoint title-text presets with the way the gradient went back and forth, though it was a reference Darnold had to teach him once he started being allowed online. Curi-osi-ty. 

Benrey reformed his body so the pinching spot was in sight of his eyes. Or maybe he formed eyes in the right spot to see the pinched spot. It wasn't vital. He could make another. It would hurt. But he could make another. 

Indigo. 

Cyan.

Indigo.

It dripped off his extra long teeth into puddles on the floor that settled and glowed pleasantly before fading away entirely. 

It sat overtop his blood like oil in water, another reference Darnold had taught him. 

The pinching spot was gone, and so was Benrey. 

...

The scientists in Black Mesa were sure to reinstall a long range teleport dampener in a more .... important location, as soon as they captured him again. 

  
  
  


By the time the sun starts setting, Benrey hasn't found his way out of the desert. It's colder at night. The science team spent a few nights out on the surface, in the wastes of Black Mesa, but they had never felt this cold. Yellow pink purple. 

Pink green purple. 

Brown black blue. 

...

Yellow pink purple.

By the time the sun starts rising again, he's never felt this tired. There's not really a colour for tired. It's not something that ever needed to be shared. Maybe grey would work? Was grey close enough? Grey was the colour of illness, weakness, vulnerability. When you sleep you put your life in the hands of those around you. That's vulnerability, right? Tired must be grey then, a shade of it somewhere in the mess of colours he doesn't always remember the name to. He'd sing some out to check, but, he's too tired. Ha.

It feels like the sort of thing Gordon would laugh at. He liked that laugh all the same though. It was pretty, even if it was mean. It was a laugh that never changed. Orange like fire and flowers and bees and halloween and sunshine. Benrey liked that laugh.

Yellow pink purple. 

Orange pink red purple blue purple orange.

Brown grey.

Black.

Pink green purple.

Benrey liked to think about pink green purple because it felt good even as it didn't. Pink. affection. Green. Kindness. Purple. "other". Technically pink green purple was shorthand, one he'd developed back during his youth. Tommy was a scientist, a junior one, sure, but he was a scientist. So was Darnold. They were "young", Tommy had said he was around 22, in an internship at Black Mesa. Darnold was ... around the same? They both were part of the team which studied him, they were just the more - green not red, pink not yellow - gentle? kind? - junior members. Not exactly a great idea to involve the interns who haven't sold their soul to the company working directly on projects that could technically make them war criminals. There was a reason Bubby, genetically created perfect scientist who just so happened to not have a social security number, was head of some of the most dangerous experiments. Tommy, and eventually Darnold, helped with Benrey's socialization but sometimes they had to be involved in things that hurt. It wasn't their fault. 

He'd first learned how humans express emotions by reading it off their faces. He could tell when him being hurt hurt them too. Pink green blue purple green grey blue pink. Affection, kindness, me, you, kindness, vulnerability, me, affection. A hard string to understand. Hard to parse. A full phrase. It means something along the lines of "the affection and kindness between us makes me vulnerable but I still care for you" or more colloquially, "i don't blame you."

Pink green purple. "I care for you."

Its own sentence, technically, but Tommy and Darnold and maybe Coomer or possibly Bubby would understand. Not Gordon, he couldn't speak sweet voice. But he was too angry to be guilty over killing Benrey at the end. No, no, it was reassurance for the others who he'd known in some regard for years. 

Pink green purple. His best friend Tommy would need that one. Pink green purple. 

...

Yellow purple pink.

The sun sets again before Benrey realizes that being destroyed on Xen and reforming entirely means he can probably teleport again. And it's rising as he decides to try it.


	2. Sunlight doesn't have a colour but it makes everything feel Orange

They're not thinking of Tommy when they teleport, though they're trying to. Tommy has always been safety. Kindness. Home. The residual fear that somehow, Black Mesa still has control over them, feels less invasive and oppressive when they think of the comfort Tommy provides. 

Benrey is thinking of a baseball diamond in a state they never learned the name of and a little boy who brought them home for snack time and their wonder at the first time they saw trees in real life and how the colour orange has been their favourite ever since and how even though their memory is a soup with sweet voice like chicken stock has bubbles of oil on top, they never forgot that little boy's name. And when they open their eyes, half sure they're going to see burn lines over their veins like the last time they tried to teleport when the dampener was installed, they're on a doorstep. Not in the desert. That rude, mean sun is still rising over the horizon but the angle is different, the air not quite so oppressive. They can hear people now. Not just the scuttering of small animals. Green like grass or pine needles spills from their lips. Relief. At least they're this much closer to not dying. Again. 

Can the desert even kill them?

The scientists never checked.

They knock on the door, hoping Sunkist is the one who answers because they could use a dog thumping her tail into their legs hard enough they almost fall over. The emotional boost you get at seeing a dog who loves you, speaks in pinks and oranges and greens and pinks, is what they need at this moment.

It's not Sunkist who answers.

In fact. They can barely tell exactly who answers before the door is closed again. Indigo cyan indigo? The door opens again, slowly, cautiously, and even Benrey's tried, strained ears can hear the heavy breathing on the other side. Indigo cyan indigo? 

...

Oh.

Apparently, they hadn't been trying hard enough. 

Gordon is looking at him in shock and fear. Benrey doesn't know how well their face is displaying emotion, but they'd assume it's something similar. That or it's not showing anything. Apparently, humans expect expressions to be maintained. Not something he was ever interested in. Freeman looked scared. 

Benrey let out a bubble of green. 

Freeman continued to look scared. 

They ... try. ... it takes words. Real words. Not just the rambling of a disconnected brain trying to parse colours like it had been the last time Benrey saw Gordon. So they try real words thought out beforehand and considered all the way to being spoken.

"Call Tommy"

  
  
  


Down in the labs, the experiments talked to one another. Those that were sentient enough to do so at least. Not just in words, but in movement, in body language. There was one scientist who used to be an experiment but was let out for good behaviour. If anyone was going to stumble their way through words, it would be him.

But the others, like the plant with delicate wrists and the peeper puppies with bands on their legs and the pigeons with hexagonal eyes and the sentient cube that might or might not be stolen, and the crab-like creature the size of a horse. There was also a horse. Benrey was not particularly fond of that horse. 

He would still warn it, however he could, when he saw it passing by with a scientist he didn't trust. 

The other sentient experiments were the same. At least the ones that spent time in any common area. He was sure there were others down further in the depths, the places he had been kept before he stopped biting and scratching and drawing blood when it was his was supposed to be on the menu instead. They were probably just as mean as he had been. 

Still was.

How else could Benrey describe Tommy still liking him? Tommy just liked mean people, he supposed.

The experiments all had a method of communication. Body language you couldn't read if you weren't one of them. Which made it all the worse when Dr. Bubby (PhD) joined the Anomaly Testing laboratories research and experimentation team.

You say a lot of things when you don't think anyone is listening.

Pink pink pink.

You let loose how attached you are to things.

Orange orange orange.

You fess up what you're really scared of.

Yellow yellow yellow.

And then you lose it all.

Grey.

Grey.

Grey.

  
  
  


They're saying words again. Words are sounds that communicate an idea, thought, or emotion. Since Benrey's brain is directly translating the colours they revert to thinking in when the stress becomes too high for manual focus, are the words more truthful? Or are they less? Does stress bring out lies or truth? They speak their words like their tongue is a limb filled with static. Whatever position it is in is completely unknown to them. To move it consciously requires effort and a push through the tingly feelings. 

No, no, no. Tommy always used to help them out of these moments. Brain turned off but the train still chugging. 

Choo choo. Leaving the station. 

Words words words like water like blood like goop.

No. Stop getting distracted. Pick a colour. Focus on it. That's what Tommy would say.

...

Benrey tries to shut themself up, maybe the words keep going or maybe not, but they're done paying attention to that.

Tommy is sunshine and kindness. Orange, good things, and green, nice things. 

But the colour Benrey is able to latch onto the most is teal. 

Stop speaking. Communicate.

Teal.

  
  
  


Blue shades are weird. Tommy said he studied linguistics in college, that's part of the reason his internship landed him a position as one of the alien experiment's caretakers. Benrey remembers the tests that came before Tommy and how excited the scientists always were when he let loose the sweet voice. it was just goop, emotion. Sound wasn't involved at first. It didn't float. It leaked out of his mouth like bile and slime and it was the colour of death. 

Benrey may not have had the same brain pathways humans did but he still felt pain. And looking back, it seemed like the scientists at first adored that. They didn't know much about whatever creature Benrey had been. So they ignored thinking about it. It was the only explanation 

He needed rest and kindness and people and - it all spilled out teal. 

The other experiments couldn't speak his language. The scientists tried to take samples (cut his chest as he was screaming, pump his stomach, open him open him open him) but it never worked. they were never satisfied. they wanted more. voice fades. sound dissipates. eyes turn off. they wanted more.

Benrey stopped using it. He learned that his teeth and nails which never saw use catching prey anymore could catch scientists' heels and machines and wires and papers and hands. Sweet voice like the poison that burns what it touches and fades with his heartbeat wasn't needed. 

But in the quiet spaces of his room, Benrey would speak to himself. not screams, not singing, not sounds. not goop or spit or bile. bubbles. soundless. 

Colourless.

empty.

lonely.

teal.

Needs for companionship. Teal. 

There's a reason it's the colour Benrey associates with Bubby.

Buby used to be an experiment. the details were never spoken of. Benrey wouldn't listen anyway. Metal and wires and tables and knives and tubes and blood and pain all blend together. So what if it wasn't  _ the same _ , the same? it was the same.

no.

yes.

Bubby knew how to read the way the experiments walk and move and lash out. And somehow he managed to convince the scientists to stop ... searching (but Bubby is the perfect scientist. xe's biding xyr time) in an effort to preserve the specimen. And it worked. It worked. How the fuck did it work? Maybe the lesser scientists were just as worried about the senior scientists as the experiments. Maybe the scientists feared the experiments and Bubby was still close enough to incite terror in them. Perfect scientist, imperfect experiment. Perfect scientist, imperfect caretaker. Perfect scientist, imperfect motivator. Perfect scientist, perfect try-er. That's what Bubby did in xyr weird way, try-ing. Do-ing. And that's what xe had done, try-ed to make it better.

For the sake of the experiment. Not for the experiment's sake. Or so xe said.

But experiments know how to read one another.

Bubby is blue because of needs. (Plus blue shades are weird, and who is weirder than Bubby?)

Benrey never asked. Will never ask. It's not his business, and even if it's not the same, the same, it's the same. But maybe Bubby did the things xe did because they were things xe had needed as an experiment. Maybe Bubby saw a bit of xemself in Benrey. 

No.

Yes. 

Teal.

  
  
  


Benrey is able to hear and think and breathe and perceive in the way they should only a little while later. It can't have been that long. Tommy still isn't here. Tommy should be here, so it can't have been that long. Tommy came to get them every time they got lost or otherwise made it out.

So, ergo, it can't have been that long. Nice. 

Plus they hadn't been shot again while distracted. Feetman had obviously upped his politeness factor since they last saw each other. He's been grinding. Or maybe it's the lack of the HEV suit and the gunfire and the aliens (present company excluded) that make him Niceman.

In the end it doesn't matter. Benrey's sitting on a cushy couch out of the rude sun's reach and isn't dead. Epic. 

They're about to tune back out when Freeman walks over. He doesn't look particularly happy, but that's why Benrey had wanted to tune out in the first place. They squish the bubble of dirt before it can escape too far. Better to just not think about it, right?

"It's for you"

Benrey holds the phone up to one side of their helmet dumbly before realizing they can't quite hear. Instead, they slide it into the space between their collar and the helmet, just before it starts. Close enough. 

"-enrey! You're back! I was m-more worried than a c-co-co, uh, rattlesnake in a cornmaze."

"Yup." they popped the "p" deliberately. Tastes like dirt and being dead still.

Unepic.

"Mr Freeman said that you look like you were out in, in the desert. Di-Is that where you came back to? Not B-Black Mesa? Do-does that, uh, does that mean it's really gone?"

"Mario three world two bitchass sun trying to eat me," Benrey mumbled as confirmation. 

He laughs, so it probably got across. "I c-can't, uh, can't wait to see you, Benrey. It's not the same without all my friends here!"

Artificially pink creme soda. Coffee. Fucking disgusting in combination, but they swallow it. No need to show Feetman. "E🅱️ic."

"I s-sw-sw, um, promise when I get back, I'll come straight to picking you up. I've still got your, your extra stuff from your last breakout, so at least you'll have some different clothes!"

Pause. Stutter. Stop. Rewind button on the Adam Sandler Click remote of life.

"..Wha?" Benrey looks up to Freeman, still pacing the room in front of them. Before they could ask or say anything, Freeman took the phone out of their weak grasp.

"But you'll be back soon, right? Like tonight?" He sounded pleading but looked annoyed every time he turned to look at Benrey. 

If Benrey wanted their mouth to taste like dirt, they would have eaten some before coming inside. This is just plain unfair, but, by nature of the stupid emotion, they can't say they don't deserve it. So they sit on Gordon's couch, desperately wishing to be dead again actually, feeling like they just guzzled decaffeinated coffee, bitter and dark.

"I'll be back as soon, as-as I can Mr Freeman!”

  
  
  


The first time Tommy figured out that dark blue has different meanings depending on where it is in the phrase he got so excited he asked Benrey a million and one questions in a row. It was hard to pay attention to them all and Benrey was sure they missed some. Probably missed most. English was hard to understand. 

And a lot of the concepts, Benrey didn't have any reference for.

Self, though, the self is blue at the end. 

"Whatever this is, it relates back to me." 

Heh, was probably pretty annoying that Benrey didn't even bother to use the blue a lot. 

Why bother when the only person you talk to is yourself?

Xen is a vast expanse where Nihilanth reigns supreme. It's a world of kill or be killed, simply by nature of survival. Only some things have enough mental capacity for conversation and out of those, only some are even willing to talk. Besides, what's the point? 

Who even bothers listening?

Tommy listens. 

Tommy  _ enjoys _ listening.

Tommy likes mean people too, so chances are he won’t try to eat Benrey as soon as he stops being entertaining. 

The self is blue because it’s the opposite of the not-self, the good friends are orange and pink and teal and green and red and everything but blue. 

Good friends are another thing he really doesn’t have a lot of reference for. 

“[What did you in your free time on Xen?]”

It took a second to figure out how even to respond to that. Learning to hold a conversation is a two-way street. Benrey settles on teal to grey, more turquoise to steele really, and feels that that makes enough sense. 

Tommy had tried to rephrase it. “[What do you do for fun?]”

This was early, it’s an early memory, one of the first from when Benrey’s brain was trained to start holding on to them. Conceptually, rote memory is different from active memory. At least, that’s what Benrey thought. Still thinks. His fingers fly across the controller to execute a delicate trick in a speedrun he’s put more hours into practicing than some people have spent in school. There is no thought there, it is simply a do or die. Benrey’s claws dug through dirt and his legs sprung at just the right time to catch his prey. There was no thought there either, it was simply eat or starve. 

Learning to converse requires him to pay attention in a way he never has before. 

What do you do for fun?

Spread out on land, under the glow of the little lights, a toe or a tail dipped in pale blue waters to give it a pleasant buzz. But that was a lot to explain in a language without words.

Benrey just laughed at the memory, and it came out orange to blue.

  
  
  


The couch is still comfortable even after Benrey is sure they’ve been here for hours. Tommy still hasn’t shown up, and Gordon has at least stopped pacing where he can be seen. He doesn’t trust Benrey, not in the fucking slightest, but he was eitehr tired enough or annoyed enough or scared enough or - well. 

Benrey’s got a little rainbow inside, who’s to say Freeman couldn’t have one also with all his possible reasons. As it was the taste of cherries dripped like too-thick syrup into his dirt-coffee with how much Freeman was carrying on and on. His pacing behind the couch was loud like gunshots and then his phone went off again and it felt like an alarm before a door comes down and there was pressure and there was - there was -

The room was coated in a sea of brown and red. 

Freeman finally stopped and went back to some back off room while Benrey watched the sweet voice float for a moment until it dropped to the floor like stones. 

Heh, almost like bouncy balls. 

They never saw if Freeman had tried to touch one, and they hope he hadn’t. His pacing is slower in whatever room he, little Babyman, had run off to. The footsteps slow eventually and then stop entirely. If they turn their ears up they can hear snoring. 

Tommy still hasn’t shown. 

How long will it be? 

Teal, to grey. More … more of a turquoise to steele, if you really look at it. 

Benrey sits on the couch until the snoring gets to be too repetitive and then they turn on the tv sitting in front of it. There’s a random tv show disc in what looks like a PS4 Freeman, no Feetman, Feetman is using as a player. 

It's a PlayStation, they’re allowed to make the Feetman joke. It's practically law atm. 

Benrey pulls out the disk and puts it back in its case which he finds on a shelf nearby. Well, they think it's the right case, there’s no disc in it and it’s not put away in the shelf like all the others. They pull a movie off the shelf without looking at the cover or the back and put it back into the PS4. Benrey purposefully steps on the few remain sweet voice orbs on the ground as they take their place again on the couch. 

Gordon is still sleeping away somewhere else so Benrey turns the volume down and their ears up. A little green-teal-blue dribbles out and they wipe it away. Time to wait for Tommy. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feelin kinda meh about this but this is written more to be written than to be good. I hope it's still interesting to go through, even with the different vibes this time. i like theorizing how Benrey's sweet voice works and what it means in my specific AU but also in general. 
> 
> hmu @floralb0t on tumblr if you want to chat!


End file.
